For determining a device's power consumption in real time, a series element (external to the device) may be added at the device's input power pin (e.g., on a circuit board), so that a voltage is measurable across the series element. For example, such voltage could be measurable by a pin grid array (“PGA”) in series with an analog-to-digital converter (“ADC”). However, such a measurement technique can increase area by a significant amount, and/or interfere with a human user's ability to accurately identify an internal portion of the device that causes an increase in the device's power consumption.
Moreover, such measurement can be slower (e.g., by many orders of magnitude) than the device's frequency of executing a software application's instructions. Such disparity (between such measurement's frequency and the device's frequency) can interfere with the human user's ability to accurately correlate an effect of the software application on the device's power consumption, unless the device is then-currently executing a relatively tight loop of the software application's instructions. To enhance such correlation, the device may output program counter samples over a trace interface, but the trace interface's operation could interfere (e.g., by multiplexing pins) with the software application's operation.